Tim Hughes puts the boot into the highs and lows of the online travel business (with an Australasian/Asian bias) with some blogging about consuming and loving travel thrown in.

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Google to launch travel meta-search in April according to unsubstantiated rumour

I heard an unsubstantiated rumour today. Someone told me something they heard from someone else that may know something. The rumour is that Google will be launching a travel meta-search product in the US next month (April). Now, let me say up front that this is nothing but rumour and I have not vetted it to anywhere near the levels of confirmation that a journalist would (may Kevin forgive me). Thought this would be a good chance to test out the power of the blog audience. Have any of you out there in blog land heard anything about Google going into travel meta-search in the coming weeks? Bing's doing it, maybe everybody should.

I called on of my contacts at a major US hotel chain and they confirmed that they are under a Non disclosure agreement with Google and could not elaborate........which was their way of confirming that Google is up to something. They also made a reference to Google's recent development of a mortgage comparison service https://www.google.com/comparisonads/mortgages#ti=0

Seems real this time; my sources (reliable) say launch confirmed for April - at least one major OTA in at the start along with some major airlines & chains. There's been discussions with a large GDS; don't know if anything got signed.

I guess it would make sense. After all, metasearch is, well, search. Google have made it clear that they're going deeper into search. And let's face it, they certainly know a thing or two about the CPC/CPA game.

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